4.
Heidegger's quiet appropriation of Hegel as the thinker of the mysteries
of being

I.
The initial appearance of the divine in Aristotle's Metaphysics
and its misinterpretation by the tradition

II.
Tracing Aristotle's search for an ou)si/a
which is a)i+/dion kai\ a)ki/nhton kai\ xwristo/n
in Book Lambda

III.
The ontological grounding of the god as the formal and final cause of to\
kalo/n seen by nou=j
and the finiteness of human mind

IV.
The fatal first step in the
Metaphysics that skips over an alternative
path for thinking: The sight of whoness

0. Abstract

This paper traces Heidegger's thinking on the divine from early to late,
calling at some of the salient stations along the way, starting with the
1920s lectures on Plato and Aristotle. One major point of call is Hegel's
dialectical-speculative thinking of the Absolute which Heidegger will characterize
as onto-theo-logic. In overcoming the hyphen between 'onto' and 'theo',
Heidegger will neutralize the venerable metaphysical ambiguity between
the ontic and the ontological and hence also between the ontological and
theological. This clears the way for thinking the Absolute as the divine
embedded prosaically, at home in the everyday itself. How close the uncanny
divine is to home is apparent also in Heidegger's retelling of the anecdote
about Heraclitus in the kitchen. The trace ends with a brief comment on
"the last god". The appendix following endeavours to rethink Aristotle's
famous god and godliness in his Metaphysics.

1. The irreligious Heidegger

The title of this conference is Heidegger und Religion. Is it an
apt title? Should it read rather: Heidegger, nicht Religion? There
are many indications in Heidegger's writings that his thinking is concerned
precisely with rejecting the claims of religion on thinking, not merely
by drawing a line between his own thinking and the theology that resulted
from the appropriation of Greek metaphysics by Christianity, but by seeking
an access to the divine which religion positively occludes. We shall see
that, from the early to the late Heidegger, there is the insight that the
divine is close at hand, closer than we think, especially under the influence
of the Christian and other monotheistic religions. {In particular, we shall
see that Heidegger reads Hegel as a thinker who prepares the way for the
Absolute to be brought down to Earth at the consummate end of the metaphysical
epoch, and indeed, in such a way that the world in its worldliness becomes
the locus of the divine.} If religion is marked by the separation of the
divine from the worldly, the sacred from the temporal, the transcendent
from the everyday, then the entire thrust of Heidegger's thinking is irreligious,
i.e. a counter-movement to religious thinking and religion as normally
understood and practised. Instead, his thinking participates in an historical
movement embedding the divine in the everyday in such a way that we can
speak of an absolutely divine everyday.

We shall now begin to concisely trace Heidegger's thinking on the divine
from early to late.

2. Early Heidegger on Plato and Aristotle

Heidegger had insight into the non-religious nature of the metaphysical
divine already early on in his lectures on Plato and Aristotle. He draws
attention to Aristotle's conception of to\ qei=on
as contemplation or speculation of to\ aei)/ o)/n,
of that which always is as it is. That which always is is standardly taken
to mean the celestial bodies which move in the heavens in 'eternal' circles,
but it also means metaphysically or ontologically to\
ti\ h)=n ei)=nai, standardly rendered in English as 'essence' but
saying literally 'the what-it-was-being' or 'the what-it-was-ness', a very
strange Aristotelean neologism coined to formulate what a being always
already was, independently of its factual, ontic existence in the traditional
sense. And of course, metaphysical speculation is concerned precisely with
learning to see what things always already were in their essences, and
this, according to Aristotle, is a seeing of the divine. Heidegger therefore
draws a line between to\ qei=on and o(
qe/oj, between the divine and the god, in Aristotle, the latter
having been appropriated by Christian theology as the summun ens and causa
sui on which all other beings depend causally for their very existence.
One reason for drawing this line is that a causa sui is a somewhat, and
not a 'somewho' with whom a personal relationship were possible.(2)
The essence as divine, however, is a sight or ei)=doj
of the being qua being in what it is and always was, and this sight is
the genuine ontological insight into beings. Of this insight, Heidegger
claims that it is divine but that there is "nothing religious"(3)
about it. Here, already, we have the nub of how Heidegger's thinking distances
itself from Christian metaphysics, locating the divine in things themselves,
even in the most banal and inconspicuous things.

Similarly, in his Plato lectures in the 1920s, Heidegger is at pains
to show that Plato's ideas are not located in some transcendent beyond,
but are present in everyday things themselves. Hence, according to Heidegger,
there is no great gulf between the 'idealist' Plato and the purported 'realist',
Aristotle, as commonly asserted. Rather, both are concerned with the divine
sight of that which makes a being a being, an endeavour distinct from trying
to discover in a supreme being the ultimate cause or ai)/tioj
of beings. It has always been an infelicity that Plato's attempts at elucidation
of his thoughts by telling mythical parables have invariably been taken
at face value for 'the real thing', thus sending entire traditions of commentators
on a wild goose chase in their interpretations of the Platonic idea.

At one point, Heidegger draws attention to Plato's observation that
the philosopher is hard to see because the place where he stands is very
bright and he notes, citing Plato, that "the eyes of the many" are unable
"to stand looking at the divine for very long".(4)
Here we have Plato himself drawing a demarcation line between what the
philosopher can see "steadfastly" and what the rest can see only fleetingly.
It is a demarcation line that Heidegger will not put into question. What
the philosopher has is wisdom, a knowing insight into the depths of things
which discovers their being. Such a sight is divine without being religious.
The philosopher does not need to be tied back (religio) to a god as supreme
being and hence ultimate cause of all beings, nor, as knowing, does the
philosopher need to have faith in the existence of a god to whom he trustingly
ties himself. Philosophical insight is also not associated with the celebration
of a cult or religious rites. Here we can see already a gulf opening up
between philosophical insight and religious experience as commonly understood
in both the West and elsewhere. Plato nevertheless concedes that the many
can see the divine, but "not for long". The many are not "steadfast" in
looking at the sight of the divine, a looking-at that calls for the practice
of thinking which, however, still leaves open the possibility of the many,
despite their "unpractised eye", being able to at least glimpse the divine
in an insight, perhaps not a knowing one, but at least an inkling or sensuously
mediated perception.

3. Transzendenz zur Welt 1928

In the second half of the 1920s we move on to Heidegger's opus magnum,
Sein
und Zeit, published in 1927. The lectures he gives in Summer Semester
1928 resonate still with the problems with which he engaged in
Sein
und Zeit. The problem of transcendence takes up a large swathe of the
latter part of the 1928 lectures. First of all, Heidegger has to distance
himself from the traditional concepts of transcendence which he labels
"epistemological transcendence" and "theological transcendence". Epistemological
transcendence, he says, concerns the problem within subjectivist metaphysics
of how the subject can get from its consciousness within which it is encapsulated
to the outside world in order to know it. The transcendence is one of crossing
over from the inside of consciousness to the outside with its objects.
Theological transcendence, by constrast, concerns 'climbing over' beyond
the given beings in the world to the unconditional Absolute on which all
else depends causally, hence making them relative, conditional beings (GA26:206).
Theological thinking attempts to 'climb over' (transcendere) everyday beings
to the Absolute beyond.

Heidegger rejects both these conceptions of transcendence (GA26:211)
and goes on to elaborate an alternative conception, which could be called
ontological transcendence, pertaining to the subjectivity of the subject.
The subject, Heidegger says,(5) must
have always already, from the outset, "leapt over" beings to that which
"enables in the first place" beings to stand over against it as objects.
That which enables beings to stand as or qua beings is what
Heidegger calls "world", so that the originary transcendence of the subject
is accordingly a transcendence to the world itself, which is not to be
understood as an ontic totality of beings but as the ontological structure,
that is, the world in its worldliness, that enables beings to show up and
present themselves as beings in the first place. Because the subject
has always already climbed over to the world itself in a preontological
understanding of being, there is no epistemological problem of how the
subject gets from inside its consciousness to objects out there in the
world. Rather, the subject is always already in the world, and therefore
Heidegger renames the subject Dasein, whose ontological structure is to
'exist', i.e. to stand out into the world among all that is and thus to
be
being-in-the-world.

Dasein as the ontological structure of human existence is eo ipso transcendent.
It is transcendent precisely to the world, not to a transcendent, other-worldly
'beyond'. By virtue of this transcendence it is always already endowed
with an understanding of being which, however, is not explicit, but implicit.
This implicit understanding of being which enables Dasein to be in the
world in an understanding way is what Heidegger calls a "preontological
understanding of being". This preontological understanding of being can
become explicit, explicated or unfolded ontological insight only through
philosophical thinking which brings to light the blindingly inconspicuous
ontological structures that enable a world to shape up as a world
for Dasein.

Heidegger says little in these lectures to distinguish his conception
of transcendence as being-in-the-world from theological transcendence.
Instead, he concentrates on showing up the inadequacies of the epistemological
transcendence that presents itself as a problem within subjectivist metaphysics,
and Kantian and Neo-Kantian, Marburgian metaphysics (GA26:209) in particular.
Nevertheless there is a highly significant footnote(6)
that explains why the problematic theological transcendence was left to
one side, as Heidegger says, because of a "violently fake religiosity nowadays"
(heutigentags, bei der gewaltsam unechten Religiosität). The footnote
makes an explicit connection between transcendence to the world and the
divine. The link lies in the "understanding of being as the overpowering,
as holiness" (Übermächtigem, qua Heiligkeit). It is not
a matter of "proving the divine ontically in its existence" (ontisch das
Göttliche in sein 'Dasein' zu beweisen), he says, but of throwing
light upon the "origin of this understanding of being from the transcendence
of Dasein" (den Ursprung dieses Seinsverständnisses aus der Transzendenz
des Daseins). The divine is hence to be found in uncovering how the "idea
of being" belongs to the "understanding of being". It is therefore apparent
that Heidegger remains true to Plato and Aristotle in uncovering, albeit
in a different way and from a different casting of human being itself as
Dasein, the idea of being that transcends all beings, thereby enabling,
[or being culpable (ai)/tioj) for,] beings to
be
beings as such.

In further distancing himself from what he regards as "fake religiosity"
(unechten Religiosität), Heidegger freely admits that he is an atheist
insofar as God is asserted or believed to exist ontically. Indeed, he asks
pointedly whether those who profess a "supposed ontic belief in God" are
in truth practising "godlessness" and, for good measure, he suggests that
a "genuine metaphysician is more religious than the usual faithful, members
of a 'church' or even the 'theologians' of every confession" (der echte
Metaphysiker religiöser ist denn die üblichen Gläubigen,
Angehörigen einer 'Kirche' oder gar die 'Theologen' jeder Konfession).
Heidegger's drift is more than apparent at this point: the divine and "holiness"
are to be discovered by gaining philosophical insight into being itself
as the "overpowering" that overcomes beings, enabling them, in the first
place, to stand as beings within Dasein's understanding. Humans
themselves are claimed qua human beings by an overpowering that exposes
them to the understanding of being that overcomes beings. Dasein's transcendence
to the world is therefore holy, the true source of the divine, not in any
ontic sense, but as an ontological overpowering. Since "Dasein's transcendence"
is claimed by Heidegger to be the source of the "understanding of being",
holiness and the divine are located in the transcendence to the world itself.
As already noted, the world here is not understood ontically as
the totality of beings, but ontologically as the world in its worldliness.
As such, according to Heidegger's 1928 lectures as well, the divine is
located within the everyday world itself.

The traditional distinction between the worldly and the other, transcendent
world beyond has no meaning in Heidegger's thinking of the divine either
in his early 1920s lectures on Plato and Aristotle, in 1928 or even thereafter.
The theological transcendence to an independent, unconditional, absolute
being upon which all else causally depends also makes no sense in Heidegger's
recasting of transcendence, because the "idea of being" only "overcomes"
human being in an interplay within historical time-space. The existential
structure of Dasein itself is interpreted already in Sein und Zeit
as temporality, so the traditional distinction within theological transcendence
between the temporal and the timeless or eternal loses its meaning. Human
being as Dasein in interplay with being has been cast as temporally finite,
as opposed to the traditional metaphysical casting of the divine as infinite
and timeless. Nevertheless, Heidegger has not done away with the divine,
but relocated it in the world.

4. Heidegger's quiet appropriation of Hegel as the thinker
of the mysteries of being

{The next station we will call at to retrace Heidegger's thinking on the
divine is his quiet appropriation of Hegel. I say 'quiet' because Heidegger
held relatively few lecture courses focusing on Hegel, published little
on Hegel and never launched a thorough-going, explicit destruction of his
thinking comparable to his Kant critique. Heidegger certainly often distances
himself from Hegel with disparaging remarks about the dialectic, and he
characterizes Hegel's system as the unsurpassable culmination of metaphysics,
and yet what he ultimately has against Hegel is never spelt out in an explicit
wrangling with the Hegelian system, and with Hegel's Logik in particular.
Indeed, in a very late seminar at Le Thor in September 1968, we find Heidegger
even teaching his students how to understand an Hegelian, speculative proposition.
I surmise that the reason for Heidegger's relative reticence on Hegel and
his schematic characterization of Hegel's speculative, dialectical thinking
is that there is a closer affinity between the two thinkers than Heidegger
would ever want to admit.

In his lectures in Summer Semester 1927,(7)
at least, Heidegger is able to praise Hegel for having liberated logic
from its formal strictures, thus breathing the life of genuine ontological
questions back into it. At the same time, however, he criticizes Hegel
for having "dissolved ontology into logic" (die Ontologie in Logik auflöste,
GA24:254). Heidegger therefore proclaims that a major task for philosophy
in the present age is that Hegel must first be "comprehended" (begriffen
GA24:254) and then overcome; indeed he declares the "overcoming of Hegel
[to be] the inner, necessary step for developing Western philosophy" (Überwindung
Hegels [als] der innerlich notwendige Schritt in der Entwicklung der abendländischen
Philosophie, GA24:254). This is a significant claim that deserves underscoring,
and therefore it is surprising that in the ensuing discussion of logic
in his 1927 lectures, Hegel himself is not cited, but only the post-Hegelian,
Lotze.

In the present context where we are considering the divine, it is crucial
to note that in Hegel's thinking, the Absolute, usually taken as a synonym
for God, is thought speculatively and dialectically, with the consequence
that the Absolute can no longer be postulated as a being in a transcendent
beyond, i.e. as a summun ens on which all else causally depends, but is
itself an empty name given many, many predicates throughout the movement
of dialectical thinking itself. At each and every stage of the dialectic,
says Hegel, the categorial stage reached can also be understood in the
form of a statement of the form, "The Absolute is ...". Thus, at the very
beginning of the Logik, the Absolute is being per se, then the Absolute
is nothingness and becoming, progressing dialectically to more concrete
determinations as essence and the concept, and on to the absolute idea.
The Absolute is all this, and is hence a movement of ontological thinking
that is absorbed in its predicates.

Moreover, this dialectical movement of thinking is ontological from
start to finish, not any sort of ontic movement such as, for instance,
an implicit historical unfolding even though, as we shall see, it has consequences
for history. In starting with being per se, and insisting on this starting-point
as the only possible, valid one, Hegel marks a turning point for the Western
philosopical spirit because now being per se or as such is distinguished
from beings as such, thus preparing the way for finally overcoming, in
Heidegger's thinking, the ambiguity inherent from the outset of metaphysical
thinking in Plato and Aristotle in the term to\ o)/n
between being and beings. The dialectical-speculative movement of thinking
is ontological also in the sense that it sees the sights of being and beings
as such. Hegel undertook what no thinker before or since has attempted,
namely, the thinking-through of all the metaphysical categories in a connected,
systematic way. Such a dialectical thinking-through means that the traditional
categories are no longer taken for granted, as they have been ever since
Aristotle set down his list of categories, but rather, their presuppositions
are explicitly given successively by deriving them, one after the other,
from the most abstract category, which is being itself. Being itself is
pure immediacy and indeterminacy and therefore the same as nothingness.
As such, it itself has no presuppositions and can therefore serve as a
starting-point.

Hegel's Logik therefore lays out the ontological structures of
metaphysical categories in a connected way which is then to serve, in a
further speculative-dialectical movement of thinking, as the foundation
for the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirited mind. The further
thinking moves in its dialectic, the more determinations grow together
to derive increasingly concrete categories and phenomena. Each stage in
the dialectical movement presupposes what has gone before which, in turn,
has been grounded by even more prior categories. Hegel claims that dialectical
thinking can speculate on concrete phenomena such as "beauty, truth, ethical
life", deriving them step by step from the more abstract categories such
as "being, non-being, unity, plurality".(8)
The
Logik thus serves as the quarry of building blocks from which
the world in its ontological worldliness is constructed. Hegel's thinking
unlocks the mystery of the ontological structure of the world, enabling
ultimately also concrete, human phenomena, and in particular, social phenomena,
to be brought to their ontological concepts. He claims, too, that "the
ancient philosophers knew very well that such abstract thoughts were invaluable
for the concrete" thus recognizing the great and laudable achievement of
the ancient Greeks in having uncovered the highly abstract categories as
indispensable for insight into the world. They did not achieve, however,
the long dialectical movement of thinking that would have linked the most
abstract concepts with the most concrete phenomena.

At the same time as praising the Greeks for having unearthed the most
abstract ontological categories that will serve as building blocks ultimately
for the concrete worldliness of the world, Hegel shifts the usual understanding
of the Greek mysteries. These, he asserts, for the Alexandrian philosophers,
and for the Neo-Platonist Proclus in particular, are not the religious
cults of mystery practised at places like Eleusis, but "speculative philosophy"
itself.(9) According to Hegel, Proclus
discovered in the famous, highly abstract and complex dialectic of the
One in Plato's Parmenides,(10)
which Hegel lauds as "the most famous masterpiece of Platonic dialectic"
(dem berühmtesten Meisterstück der Platonischen Dialektik., VGPII
W19:79.),(11) as "true theology,
as the true revelation of all the mysteries of the divine being" (wahrhafte
Theologie an, für die wahrhafte Enthüllung aller Mysterien des
göttlichen Wesens). How can Hegel make such a claim? "Because," he
says, "by God we understand the absolute essence of all things; this absolute
essence is precisely in its simple concept the unity and movement of these
pure essentialities, of the ideas of the one and the many, etc." (Denn
unter Gott verstehen wir das absolute Wesen aller Dinge; dies absolute
Wesen ist eben in seinem einfachen Begriffe die Einheit und Bewegung dieser
reinen Wesenheiten, der Ideen des Einen und Vielen usf.).(12)
Hegel therefore insofar continues the fateful metaphysical tradition of
passing back and forth without care across the ambiguity between being
and beings, between 'Wesen' understood as a being and 'Wesen' understood
as essence, between the divine understood ontologically and the divine
understood ontically as a divine being.

All of these Hegelian insights are not antithetical to Heidegger, and
he quietly appropriates them, at the same time making a couple of crucial
and clarifying modifications. The first modification is that Heidegger,
already from early on, is careful to distinguish between being and beings,
and especially between being as divine and the divine being. The former
is an ontological insight only to be had by the thinking mind. The latter
is an ontic thing, albeit the supreme being among other beings, for whom
there is no so-called ontological proof of its existence, but only faith
in its existence. As we have seen already from his 1928 lectures, Heidegger
is content to locate the divine solely in the ontological dimension and
to leave ontic assertions about a god's existence alone. In 1957, Heidegger
confirms his reticence about speaking of God "in the realm of thinking"
(im Bereich des Denkens).(13)

The second clarifying modification of Hegel's thinking that Heidegger
performs in his important study on 'Hegel's Concept of Experience' from
1942/43 is to note simply that Hegel's dialectical-speculative thinking
of the Absolute in both the Phänomenologie des Geistes and
the Logik, although in a formal sense adequately characterizable
as a theology, is in truth thoroughly worldly, i.e. secular.(14)
This turning of the tables on Hegel's Logik, in particular, as the foundation
of the entire system, brings it into its proper light as an ontology of
the world in its worldliness in which the most abstract and simple concepts
serve as the scaffolding on which the world in its concreteness is built.(15)

But there is a further nexus between Hegel's and Heidegger's thinking
at this juncture, and that is both thinkers' thinking on history.
The abstract categories thought through in philosophical thinking are for
Hegel not merely "word-abstractions" but "deeds of the Weltgeist [...]
and therefore of destiny" (Taten des Weltgeistes [...] und darum des Schicksals)(16)
which the philosophers are able to see because they have been initiated
into the mysteries of philosophical thinking. These abstract concepts thought
in an ontology shape up in world history as the building blocks on which
the world rests and of which it is constituted. Hegel provides the example
of the trinity, the concrete unity of three in one, through which "the
[Neo-Platonic] Alexandrians grasped the nature of spirited mind" (Die Alexandriner
[...] haben die Natur des Geistes aufgefaßt. W19:488) and which went
on to become world-historical in forming a basis for the Christian world
and the Christian epoch. Such an insight into the world-historical import
of so-called 'abstract philosophical ideas' is not at all foreign to Heidegger
who, within his thinking of the history of being, accords apparently abstract
metaphysical concepts such as e)ne/rgeia and
certitudo the weight and scope to cast an historical world epoch.

This uncanny affinity between Hegel's and Heidegger's thinking on history
becomes less odd when we call to mind that Heidegger has been quietly appropriating
Hegel's philosophy and adapting it to his thinking on being from his habilitation
thesis right up to the very last seminars with his French disciples in
Le Thor in the late 1960s. The major difference between Hegel's and Heidegger's
thinking on history is that Hegel conceives world history as a continuous
unfolding of the Weltgeist in which what has been prepared, or can
be seen retrospectively, in abstract philosophical thinking shapes an historical
world, whereas Heidegger underscores the leaps and ruptures in the sendings
from being.(17) Thus, for
instance, there is a rupture, including a recasting of the essence of truth
between the medieval Christian world, whose philosophy is theology, and
the Modern Age inaugurated by Cartesian subjectivist metaphysics.

As we have noted, one of Heidegger's major adaptations of Hegelian dialectical
speculation is to rid it of its ontic-ontological ambiguity. Hegel's Logik,
although deserving the title of "onto-theo-logic" which Heidegger attributes
to it in 1957,(18) when
read in another, more adequate way, namely, as the systematic dialectical
thinking-through of the ontological building blocks of the world, is in
truth simply a dialectical ontology in which the qeo/j
has become the qei=on of speculative-ontological
insight itself. The Absolute can no longer be tied down as a god, as a
divine being, but rather, the divine is in the world itself.

The divine comes into the world and is prosaically close at hand as
the worldliness of the world. Being so close at hand, the world in its
godliness is unrecognizable for any religion that experiences the divine
as situated in a transcendent beyond and postulates a transcendent god.
Hegel is above all a thinker who shows that the Absolute cannot be pin-pointed
as a transcendent supreme being with a list of attributes such as omniscience,
omnipotence, etc., but commingles in countless ontological shapes with
finite beings which, as overpowered by the Absolute, are made to stand
as beings and, at the same time, are made infinite, insofar as beings are
overcome by the dialectical movement that transcends the limits of merely
finite understanding which is unable to see the difference of the ontological
dimension and merely seeks to fix its determinations in a rigid, so-called
'logical' order, thus setting up its orderly definitions and limits. This
is apparent already in Hegel's interpretation of the Platonic ideas, which
he brings down to earth in declaring, "that this essence of things is the
same as the divine being" (daß dies Wesen der Dinge dasselbe ist,
was das göttliche Wesen, W19:84). Such an interpretation agrees entirely
with Heidegger's. The difference between Hegel and Heidegger resides in
Hegel's continuation of the metaphysical ambiguity between the divine understood
both ontically and ontologically. Only by holding on to this ambiguity
can Hegel retain his Christianity. Without it, the world in its worldliness
becomes thinkable as infinitely finite and finitely infinite, and hence
absolutely divine in its very everydayness.

Apart from clarifying and dispensing with the distinction and ambiguity
between ontology and theology that marks traditional metaphysics as onto-theo-logic,
Heidegger also seeks to find the as yet "unthought unity" (ungedachte Einheit,
IuD:51) of these two essential, onto und theo-logical strands of
metaphysical thinking in the famous "step back" (Schritt zurück, IuD:46,
61, 63). The step back brings being itself along with the clearing of self-concealment
into view, the mysterious source from which all difference is granted and
arises.}

5. Heidegger with Heraclitus in the kitchen

{Around the time when Heidegger was engaged with writing on "Hegel's concept
of experience", he also held lectures,} in the summer semesters of 1943
and 1944, <Heidegger held lectures> on Heraclitus. This is an interesting
stopping-point for our retracing of Heidegger's thinking on godliness because
it shows just how everyday for Heidegger's mind the presence of the divine
can be. Heidegger begins his lectures by relating the famous anecdote handed
down by Aristotle about Heraclitus receiving a visit from strangers, who
were surprised and disappointed to find him quite mundanely standing at
the kitchen stove, warming himself. Heraclitus beckons them to come in,
encouraging them with the words, "Here, too, the gods are present".(19)

Heidegger interprets this anecdote by claiming that when Heraclitus
says that the gods are present even where he is warming himself at the
kitchen stove, he is in truth saying that "only [...] in the inconspicuous
everyday" are the gods present. Heidegger goes on to say that:

You don't need to evade what is familiar and ordinary and go
in pursuit of what is exciting and stimulating in the deluded hope of encountering
the unordinary in this way. You should just keep to your daily and ordinary
affairs, like I am doing here, staying in the kitchen to keep warm. Isn't
what I am doing and that with which I am occupied not sufficiently filled
with signs?(20) (Heidegger,
GA55:8 Heraklit)

Once again, Heidegger points to the presence of the unordinary in the ordinary,
of the uncanny in the canny, familiar and banal, thus bringing the mystery
close to home, even into the kitchen. There is no need to go in search
of and to celebrate something otherworldly because the divine, with its
"signs", is present right here in the world. Therefore, Heidegger says,
the "distress of thinkerly care" is "to care thinkingly about the unordinary
in everything ordinary".(21)
The reference to a "distress" of thinking indicates not only that it is
difficult to see the presence of the divine unordinary in the inconspicuously
mundane, familiar and everyday, but also that it is difficult and dangerous
to try to bring others to see it. He points out that "the relationship
of the Greeks to the gods is moreover a knowing and not a 'faith'
in the sense of a deliberate holding-to-be-true on the basis of an authoritative
annunciation. We do not yet fathom in which incipient way the Greeks were
the knowing ones." (Wir ermessen es noch nicht, in welch anfänglicher
Weise die Griechen die Wissenden gewesen.(22))
Are these Greeks to whom Heidegger is referring the ancient Greeks in general
in their world populated also by the gods, or are they, as "knowing ones",
only the philosophers? Heidegger rejects that it is only the philosophers
who know. He claims, on the contrary, that only the Greeks as knowing "found
the beginning of proper thinking. They weren't knowing just because they
had a philosophy" (Weil sie es gewesen, deshalb fanden sie den Anfang des
eigentlichen Denkens. Nicht etwa waren sie Wissende, weil sie eine Philosophie
besaßen.).

Accordingly, even the cults at Delphi, Eleusis and elsewhere would have
to be understood as based on a knowing relationship of the Greeks to their
gods, i.e. that their gods were simply present and gave signs, just as
Heraclitus says, "The lord of whom the oracle is in Delphi neither says
nor hides but gives signs."(23)
These oracular signs, of course, had to be interpreted, thus setting a
hermeneutical task for anyone being given a sign from Delphi. Thus, most
famously, Socrates received the sign from the Delphic oracle that there
was no man wiser than he, a sign which Socrates then went on to examine
and test by questioning his fellow Athenian citizens. In this way, Socrates
was true to the motto over the entrance at Delphi, gnw=qi
s"auto/n "Know thyself". This motto is echoed in an oft-quoted line
from Pindar, ge/noi', oi(=oj e)ssi maqw/n. "Become,
learning who you are!" (Pindar 2nd Pyth., line 72). Learning and knowing
must indeed be distinquished from faith, from holding something to be true
on the basis of unknowing, i.e. blind trust. "Become, learning who you
are!" can be regarded for the Greeks as a god-given task of uncovering
the truth about oneself as a human being by following the enigmatic
signs present in the ordinary.

Perhaps for the ancient Greeks their gods were present in such a self-evident,
matter-of-course way unimaginable to us today for whom it is just as self-evident
that there are no gods present in a matter-of-fact way, especially when
standing at the kitchen stove to keep warm. Perhaps the matter-of-course
sign-giving presence of the gods in the everyday disposed the Greeks to
being receptive also to pursuing philosophical insight by taking up the
inconspicuous presence of the divine in the signs present even in the most
banal and familiar things. The unordinary ontological dimension indicated
in the ordinary everyday was not alien to them, and so their exceptional
ones were inclined to follow the signs and question more deeply the very
close, blindingly obvious and yet enigmatic phenomena of being itself and
non-being, the one and the other, the same and the different, movement
and standstill, and all the other categories that drew philosophers such
as Plato into a dialectic of abstract ideas.

Conversely, perhaps the Greek philosophers were also able to 'naturally'
draw the attention of even the uncultivated many to the enigmatic signs
of
the unordinary in the ordinary because the Greeks had a hermeneutic relationship
with their gods based on knowing through following indicative signs, and
not on faith or authoritative, holy scripture. If we ask today whether
ordinary mortals need the unordinary to celebrate the divine, the empirically
plausible answer would be, yes, they do. The divine is set apart as the
out-of-the-ordinary, and cultivated and celebrated in certain cult ceremonies.
Moreover, normal people's relationship to the divine is first and foremost
one of trusting faith in a transcendent being dwelling in a separate, transcendent,
supernatural realm, about which modern, knowing, scientific thinking, by
virtue of its very casting, can only be highly skeptical. By rethinking
transcendence and locating it in the world itself, Heidegger has taken
a step toward reconciling the dichotomy between modern faith and modern
knowing by demonstrating phenomenologically that there is indeed a mysterious,
enigmatic dimension present 'in between', even and especially and ubiquitously
in the inconspicuous everyday. It is a deficiency in modern scientific
knowing itself that it is unable to see this dimension, that is, that it
systematically skips over it. Knowing insight into this ontological dimension
is one important aspect and one possibility pointed to by the divine presencing
closer to home.

6. The perplexing figure of the "last god"

We come now finally to a brief comment on the figure of "the last god"
from Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy (Of Enpropriation)
from 1936/38.(24) "The
last god" is a puzzling figure, above all because thinking, Heidegger claims,
has the highly mediated task of "preparing the preparedness for keeping
oneself open for the arrival or non-arrival of the god".(25)
This formulation indicates that we are at least three steps removed from
any arrival or non-arrival of the last god. In the Spiegel interview
from 1966, Heidegger hints at the non-arrival and refusal to appear, rather
than at the eventual arrival of this last god, which non-appearance, he
says, would nonetheless suffice for "a liberation of human beings from
[...] succumbing to beings"(26)
and a "rescuing and sheltering of the truth [of beyng] in beings"(27)
by grounding "the clearing of the Da," {i.e. the Here in which beyng can
hide itself}.(28)

How does the thought of the last god square with what Heidegger says
otherwise about the divine as ontological and about the non-existence of
a god in the ontic sense? Only an ontically understood god could "hate",(29)
for instance, but how can Heidegger speak with such intimate knowledge
about a hating god who is yet to arrive in history? Is Heidegger's conjuring
of the last god a relapse into religious yearning? Is this last god to
satisfy the needs of the many who will never attain proper philosophical
insight by following the enigmatic signs? Or is Heidegger's pre-pre-announcement
the preparation for the enduring non-appearance of a god, for his merely
indicative passing-by in a refusal to appear? Apart from the hints in the
Spiegel interview, we have only the Beiträge to go on which, however,
Heidegger himself characterizes in the motto over the entire script as
"hints [...] reserved in long hesitation as a straight-edge for a formulation".(30)
This says that the Beiträge as a whole, and, in particular, the sketch
of the last god, are only notes for a further elaboration which, however,
was not forthcoming. To call the Beiträge Heidegger's "second opus
magnum" is therefore a misleading misnomer.(31)

The last god, Heidegger says, echoing Heraclitus, gives only a sign
or clue (Wink) in passing by (Vorbeigang). This sign, however, is supposed
to suffice for the "innermost finitude of beyng" to "reveal itself".(32)
This last, sign-giving god therefore has nothing to do with timeless eternity,
but with coming to know the finite horizon of historical time-space inhabited
by mortal human beings, and this insistence on finitude accords with the
entire thrust of Heidegger's thinking from beginning to end. It is also
plain that Heidegger casts the last god in a counter-casting to the Christian
God, since he announces unambiguously in the motto to the section on the
last god that he is "the completely other god over against the gods that
have been, especially against the Christian one".(33)But why cast a god at all, especially a god whose arrival or non-arrival
from the future is to be prepared by "preparing a preparedness for keeping
oneself open"? Is it not possible for ordinary mortals to become aware
of the absolutely divine mystery of the most inconspicuous everyday without
invoking a god, albeit a god who will refuse to appear? Or is this god
himself only a passing, non-existent indication, an enigmatic sign of the
inconspicuously present mystery?

Appendix: Aristotle's purely energetic god of the fair

I. The initial appearance of the divine in Aristotle's
Metaphysics
and its misinterpretation by the tradition

There are two parallel sites in Aristotle's Metaphysics where, famously,
the "divine" (qei=on) initially crops up. These
are Met. Epsilon/VI 1026a20 and Met. Kappa/XI 1064a36, where Aristotle
also introduces the distinction between three "speculative philosophies"
(filosofi/ai qewrhtikai/ 1026a19) or speculative
"sciences" (e)pisthmw=n 1064b2), namely, physical,
mathematical and filosofi/a qeologikh/ (1026a20;
cf. 1064b3), this third dealing with the "divine". Because this theological
philosophy deals with the divine, it is also the "first" (prw/th
1026a16) among the three speculative or theoretical philosophies. Whether
such a theological philosophy exists apart from and prior to the other
two, Aristotle claims, depends upon "whether there is something forever
and immovable and separable/able to stand for itself" (ei)
de/ ti/ e)stin a)i+/dion kai\ a)ki/nhton kai\ xwristo/n 1026a11).
In the tradition of commentary on Aristotle, this "something" (ti/)
has invariably been taken to mean a being of some sort, the seed crystal
of what will turn out to be "the god" (o( qeo/j
1072b31) who first appears in Book Lambda/XII Chapter 7, understood as
an ontically existing being. Hugh Tredennick(34)
renders this ti/ as "a thing" and Horst Seidl(35)
as "etwas" or "something" which, in his commentary on this passage, is
explicitly understood as "the 'eternal, unmoved and separable' being
as different from the (initial) object of physics and mathematics".(36)
The three qualities of being eternal, immovable and separable are to qualify
a somewhat as divine which, in turn, will prove to be the god.

The tradition also mostly understands xwristo/n
exclusively as 'separable from matter' and soon entangles itself in contradictions
with this single-minded understanding which conveniently makes a dichotomy
between physical beings inseparable from matter and intelligible beings
separable from matter, including the god and angels, and therefore thinkable
in themselves. Tredennick, for instance, renders xwristo/n
at 1026a11 as "separable from matter" and Seidl, somewhat better, as "Abtrennbares
(Selbständiges)", i.e. "separable (independent, standing for itself)".
Tredennick then fudges just a few lines further down where Aristotle speaks
of physics as dealing with xwrista\ me\n a)ll" ou)k
a)ki/nhta ("separable but not immovable" 1026a14) by translating
this phrase, "things which exist separately but are not immutable", whereas
Seidl provides a better rendering "von abtrennbaren (selbständigen),
aber nicht unbeweglichen Dingen", i.e. "separable (independent) but not
immovable things". The Greek xwristo/n does
mean 'separable', but also 'standing for itself' or 'able to stand for
itself', and it is by no means the case that in Aristotle's writings
xwristo/n
can be uniformly or even mostly understood as 'separable from matter',
for such an interpretation would already make a nonsense of the just-quoted
characterization of physics as dealing with
xwrista\,
since all physical beings are material. Hence, in each individual context
it has to be decided whether an interpretation of xwristo/n
as 'separable from matter' is appropriate.

The next stumbling block or aporia for the interpretation of these parallel
passages, which has been controversial for two millennia, concerns the
double title for the Metaphysics as filosofi/a
qeologikh/, on the one hand, and as the investigation of to\
o)\n v(= o)/n, beings qua beings or beings in their being, on the
other. How do these two rubrics fit together? The "theological philosophy"
is designated as the "first philosophy" because it deals with an ou)si/a
a)ki/nhtoj (1026a29), and this ou)si/a
is interpreted as a being, a first being or "substance" (Tredennick) or
"Substanz" (Seidl S. 422). The theological philosophy of this first being
or substance would be concerned with a specific entity as a somewhat, namely,
the divine being or god, separable from matter, whereas the investigation
of beings qua beings would be concerned with the whole (kaqo/lou).
This corresponds to the distinction in traditional metaphysics between
metaphysica specialis and metaphysica generalis. This disparity has been
resolved in the (especially Thomist) tradition by interpreting the first,
divine "substance" also as the first, divine "cause" (Ursache, Seidl S.
422) on which all beings depend. What kind of "cause" is intended here
is at first unclear. Although Aristotle has a fourfold distinction among
causes (ai)/tia), it seems at first that the
"divine substance" is understood as an effective cause, an effective mover
effecting both the existence and movement of all beings.(37)
The various kinds of causes will come to the fore when we follow through
Aristotle's line of thought that tracks down the "unmoved mover".

It is, however, questionable, or at least worthy of questioning, whether
the divine ou)si/a a)ki/nhtoj can or must be
understood as a being or substance at all, and it is remarkable that the
commentaries do not grapple problematically with the various possible meanings
of ou)si/a as summarized in Delta Chapter 8,
which range from simply the various kinds of beings, including "animals
and daimonia" (1017b12) through to to\ ti/ h)=n ei)=nai
("the what-it-was-ness", usually rendered as 'essence', 1017b22), and o(\
a)\n to/de ti o)\n kai\ xwristo\n v(=: toiouton de e(ka/ston h( morfh\
kai\ to\ ei)=doj ("what is a this-here and standing-for-itself;
such, however, is in each case the form and sight", 1017b26).

Assuming, however, that the ou)si/a a)ki/nhtoj
sought is simply a kind of being, viz. a divine being, compels certain
readings of Aristotle's text. Thus, in the parallel section in Book Kappa,
Aristotle asks whether there is an ou)si/a xwristh\
kai\ a)ki/nhtoj — "which we shall try to show" (1064a36) — and continues,
"and if there is such a nature (fu/sij) in/among
beings (e)n toi=j ou)=sin), here, if anywhere,
would be also the divine, and this would be the first and most powerful
principle/beginning (a)rxh/)" (1064a38). The
phrase, e)n toi=j ou)=sin, can be understood
most literally as "in beings", but also as "among beings". Tredennick has
"in the world of reality", whereas Seidl has "unter dem Seienden" or "among
beings", and these renderings are a consequence of assuming that the divine
ou)si/a
must be a separate divine being, separable also from matter, that is in
the world or among (other) beings, whereas an alternative signification
of ou)si/a as an ontological element would allow
this divine ou)si/a to be in beings.

As we shall see, or as I will endeavour to show,(38)
the key to interpreting the divine ou)si/a in
the Metaphysics is provided by the last 'definition' in Delta Chapter
8 as ei)=doj, i.e. the 'sight' which each singular
being as a 'this-here' offers of itself as a being, and it is noteworthy
that the ei)=doj crops up precisely in connection
with the individual 'this-here' as xwristo\n,
i.e. standing-for-itself. It is the defining, delimiting sight or
look
which enables a singular being to stand as a being and to show itself as
a being within its defining limits. The signification of ou)si/a
as 'substance', on the other hand, is at the best ambiguous, having more
to do with one possible signification of ou)si/a
as u(pokei/menon (1017b24), i.e. as that which
'underlies' a predicate predicated of a subject, which reduces to signifying
merely an independent being of some sort, or as that which 'underlies'
the change of something, namely, matter, u(/lh
(1070a20). But matter does not have a stand within itself, and of itself
is unable to present itself as a being, for it offers no sight of itself
as such.

If we put into question a predominant traditional reading (influenced
by Neo-Platonism) of an ou)si/a which is a)i+/dion
kai\ a)ki/nhton kai\ xwristo/n to mean 'self-evidently' a divine
being upon which all other beings causally depend, in order to discover
another possible reading and line of thought latent in Aristotle's text,
we first have to keep in mind that already the inaugural definition of
metaphysics as the investigation of to\ o)\n v(= o)/n,
i.e. beings insofar as they are beings, for Aristotle immediately becomes
an investigation of ou)si/a. Accordingly, the
most precise, neutral and open rendering of ou)si/a
in this regard has to be 'beingness', for metaphysics is the philosophy
of beings in their beingness, but, significantly, this possible rendering
of ou)si/a as 'beingness' or 'Seiendheit' is
entirely lacking in the metaphysical tradition, although the Latin 'essentia'
does have the required homology but often is used also for to\
ti/ h)=n ei)=nai.(39)
The very word, ou)si/a, is already 'built' as
the noun-substantivization of the feminine present participle ou)=sa
of the verb, ei)=nai 'to be'. The term ou)si/a
thus retains an ambiguity that vacillates between meaning simply a being
or kind of being (albeit invariably in a mode of being), on the one hand,
and, on the other, the decisively ontological being-ness of a being, as
brought to expression most incisively in the ontological concepts of the
unchanging, immovable to\ ti/ h)=n ei)=nai which
turns out to be the ei)=doj, i.e. that which
the being always already was as a sight.

The metaphysical tradition, however, translating ei)=doj
as 'forma', has a tendency toward understanding ei)=doj
ontically, being misled perhaps by geometrical forms such as the 'circle'
or the 'sphere', as if these forms, because they can be sensuously represented,
are merely ontic, or by other sensuously perceptible forms, such as the
drawn figure of a human being. But ei)=doj is
ontological through and through, and the circle or sphere as such can only
be seen ontologically by the mind, i.e. by a mind that is open to beings
as or qua beings. To the present day, there seems to be confusion among
Aristotle scholars over the thoroughly ontological status of ei)=doj(40)
and indeed all the categories in Aristotle's metaphysics, without exception.
They have not properly understood the fundamental, crucial formula for
metaphysics, namely, to\ o)\n v(= o)/n, and
are blind to the apophantic as that enables a being to show itself
as
a being. The apophantic as is the inconspicuous, easily overlooked
site 'in between' of the ontological difference.

To gain an alternative interpretation of the divine ou)si/a
which does not merely assume that Aristotle is 'self-evidently' postulating
or affirming the existence of a divine being, we must follow through the
elaborate ontological grounding of this problematicou)si/a
provided by Aristotle in Book Lambda/XII in a progression from Chapters
1 through to 6. As we shall see, this book is anything but an ontological
proof leading cut-and-dried to a god who 'exists'.

II. Tracing Aristotle's search for an ou)si/a
which is a)i+/dion kai\ a)ki/nhton kai\ xwristo/n
in Book Lambda

Aristotle himself takes up the question concerning ou)si/a again in Book
Lambda/XII, the famous book in which "the god" (o(
qeo/j) appears in its 7th chapter. Right at the beginning of this
book, in the first chapter, after announcing in the first sentence that
"the theory/speculation here is about ou)si/a"
(Peri\ th=j ou)si/aj h( qewri/a 1069a18),
the three decisive terms, a)i+/dioj, a)ki/nhtoj
and xwristo/j, crop up immediately once again
in connection with three ou)si/ai, namely, i)
the a)i+/dioj ai)sqhth/ (perpetual sensuously
perceptible), ii) the fqarth\ ai)sqhth/ (perishable
sensuously perceptible) and iii) the a)ki/nhtoj
(unmoving/immovable) ou)si/a (1069a30-34) comprising
the ei)/dh and perhaps also the maqhmatika/.
The first two are movable and changeable and as such are studied by physical
science (1069b1), whereas the third is investigated by "another" science
"if there is no common beginning/principle to all three" (ei)
mhdemi/a au)toi=j a)rxh\ koinh/ 1069b2). Note that this third kind
of ou)si/a is not a class of sensible beings
and can hardly be regarded simply as a dichotomous ontic classification
into movable and immovable beings, i.e. a cutting-into-two into sensuously
perceptible, physical beings, on the one hand, and, on the other, intellectually
perceptible, metaphysical beings. On the contrary, from the sequel there
is no doubt that Aristotle treats the ei)=doj
as having the nature of an a)ki/nhtoj ou)si/a,
and the ei)=doj is perhaps the most emphatically
ontological signification of ou)si/a of all,
referring to a being's beingness as the sight which a being (including
especially a sensuously perceptible being) presents of itself qua a being.
The ei)=doj as a)ki/nhtoj
already fulfils one of the criteria for the ou)si/a
sought. Unlike physical ou)si/ai, which indeed
can be regarded also as kinds of beings, the ei)=doj
is not subject to change (metabolh/ 1069b3)
and it is not a being understood as ontically or factually existing. It
remains unclear, however, whether the ei)=doj
is xwristo/n,(41)
as "some say" (tine\j fasi 1069a34) and, if
so, in what sense.

To discover whether and in what sense ei)=doj
also fulfils the criteria of a)i+/dion and xwristo/n,
Aristotle proceeds in Chapter 2 to analyze at first sensuously perceptible
or movable beings further (and not some kind of transcendent, intelligible
beings separable from matter), thereby uncovering their ontological "causes"
(ai)/tia 1069b33), "elements" (stoixei=a
1070b18) or "principles/beginnings" (a)rxai/
1070b18), namely ei)=doj, ste/rhsij
and u(/lh (1069b34, 1070b19), or the sight,
lack and matter. These elements of sensuously perceptible beings, it must
be emphasized, can only be seen as such with the mind's eye,
which is capable of analyzing. The sight and lack or privation of sight
are opposites (e)nanti/wsij 1069b33). An example
provided by Aristotle himself is that of the sight of a house, a certain
disorder (which is the lack of the sight of a house), and bricks (1070b29).
Matter such as bricks is potentially either a house or its opposite, an
unsightly heap, in actuality, and the opposites of the sight and the unsightly
lack can change into each other. Matter presenting a sight can decay into
the unsightly and, conversely, the unsightly can become sightly. Thus,
the further ontological categories of du/namij
and e)ne/rgeia (1069b17) also come into play,
since matter has the potential or power (du/namij)
of 'suffering' (pa/sxein) to have a sight, an
ei)=doj
impressed upon it when the latter sets to work (e)nergei/#).

Aristotle analyzes all change as the change of "something by something
into something" (pa=n ga\r metaba/llei ti kai\ u(po/
tinoj kai\ ei)/j ti 1070a1). The something changed is matter (u(/lh),
changed by "the first mover" (tou= prw/tou kinou=ntoj
1070a2), into something, the ei)=doj (1070a2)
or sight. The mover is not an element of sensuously perceptible beings,
but it is a cause and principle/beginning and, as such, an ou)si/a
(1070b24-26) so that Aristotle says there are three elements, but four
causes and beginnings (1070b27). It is apparent from this analysis of movable,
sensually perceptible beings into four ontological causes or principles/beginnings
that Aristotle undertakes a productivist analysis of beings in their
beingness. Such a productivist analysis applies also to physical beings
proper that have a beginning or principle of movement within themselves
and thus bring forth their own movements of four kinds::bringing themselves
forth alongside the movements of change of place, alteration, and growth
and decay. Their reproductive or progenerative movement, in particular,
is then thought as au)topoi/hsij, i.e. self-production,
where the governing starting-point (a)rxh/)
of movement is "in itself, (for a human being generates a human being)"
(e)n au)t%= (a)/nqrwpoj ga\r a)/nqrwpon genn#=)
1070a8). There are therefore "three ou)si/ai"
(1070a10) or ontological 'beingnesses', namely, i) "this matter here",
ii) "this nature here and a disposition toward it" (an ou)si/a,
namely, the ei)=doj) and iii) what is composed
of these in each case "such as Socrates or Kallias" (1070a13). He notes
that "with some, the this-here is not (does not exist) next to the synthetic
ou)si/a
(for instance, of the house the ei)=doj, except
as the te/xnh; and there is no genesis and decay
of such, but in another way, a house without matter and health and everything
according to know-how are and are not), but if so, then with physical beings"
(1070a13-18).

The significance of this remark is that, in the case of beings produced
by know-how, the sight is and is not, exists and does not exist without
matter, i.e. apart from in a synthesis or an amalgamation with matter.
The "moving causes pre-exist the beings" (kinou=nta
ai)/tia w(j progegenhme/na o)/nta 1070a22) produced, whereas the
lo/goj
or ei)=doj exists "simultaneously" (a(/ma
1070a22), e.g. health is/exists when the man has become healthy (1070a23).
In other words, the sight of health is in the healthy man, and the sight
of the figure of the bronze sphere is/exists simultaneously with the produced
bronze sphere itself (1070a25). Aristotle then says that whether the sight
"remains" (u(pome/nei 1070a25) still has to
be investigated, but that, in some cases, "nothing prevents this, for instance,
the psyche may be such as this, not all of it, but the nou=j"
(1070a26). So, in the case of know-how, the sight "remains" in the mind.
And, in the case of physical beings, the existing, amalgamated sight is
already in the starting-point, since, for example, "a human being generates
a human being" (1070a29). From this he concludes "that it is not necessary
[...] that the i)de/aj are/exist (ei)=nai)"
(1070a29), an implicit criticism of Plato. That the sight "remains" in
the mind already provides a crucial hint,. foreshadowing the transition
to understanding the ei)=doj as an a)i+/dioj
ou)si/a in the further course of Aristotle's train of thought, starting
with Chapter 6.

That the sight is in the mind has the further consequence that, in one
sense, there are four causes of movable beings, namely the sight, the lack
of sight, matter and the mover, e.g. "health, illness, body; the mover:
medical know-how, or the sight, a certain disorder, bricks; the mover:
the know-how of house-building" (1070b28-29), but, "since in physical beings
the mover of a human being is a human being, and in those of thought the
mover is the sight or its opposite, in one way there are three causes,
but in another four, because health in a way is medical know-how, and the
sight of the house is house-building know-how, and a human being generates
a human being" (1070b30-34). The mover (to\ kinou=n)
is therefore ambiguous in the case of produced movable beings because the
sight and the know-how can either be regarded as two different causes or
as one and the same, since the sight, as know-how, is in the mind. In the
case of physical progeneration, however, this sight is already in the mover
as the sight the mover itself shows of itself, the mover moving itself
in reproducing itself. If the four causes are thus reduced to three, therefore,
the
mover is the sight itself. So, when Aristotle says that all change
is a changing of something by something into something (1070a1), thus giving
three causes, namely, matter, the mover and the sight, these three reduce
to two insofar as the mover of the matter is the sight itself, the
sight being initially in the matter itself, as in the case of physical
reproduction, or in the mind, as in the case of a change brought about
by know-how. In other words, the three causes, the material cause, the
effective cause (or mover) and the eidetic or formal cause, reduce to two,
because the effective and formal causes are the same, i.e. in a certain
sense, the sight moves the matter in the case of both physical and
produced movable, sensuously perceptible beings.

After showing that the four causes, in a certain way, can be reduced
to three insofar as the sight itself is the mover, Aristotle adds, "Moreover,
besides these [there is], as first of all, the mover of all" (1070b34)
This "first mover of all" must therefore be seen in connection with the
sight
as mover. Tredennick footnotes at this point, "For the first time the
ultimate efficient (sic) cause is distinguished from the proximate," even
though Aristotle has just reduced the efficient cause to the formal or
eidetic cause, i.e. to the sight itself as cause. And Tredennick continues,
"Aristotle is leading up to the description of the Prime Mover which occupies
the latter half of the book [Lambda]", thus revealing unmistakably that,
in Tredennick's view, this "Prime Mover" is to be understood as an efficient
cause. But what if this very first mover, the motor of all, has to be understood
as the sight? Seidl's commentary on this sentence that this first mover
is the "supreme final cause transcending all" (allem transzendente, oberste
Zweckursache, S. 556) is closer to the mark, although at this stage only
eidetic or formal cause, but not final cause, has been introduced by Aristotle.

In Chapter 5, Aristotle turns first of all to the question of the ou)si/ai
as xwrista/ (1071a1) and notes that it is precisely
the ou)si/ai which can stand separately for
themselves and which are now named as "psyche and body, or mind, appetite
and body" (1071a3). These ou)si/ai or a)rxai/
can also be viewed from the viewpoint of du/namij
and e)ne/rgeia, so that it is matter that is
in the mode of being of potentiality (duna/mei
1071a10), and the sight (and lack of sight) which is in the mode of actuality
or at-work-ness (e)nergei/# 1071a8) "insofar
as it [the sight] is able to stand for itself" (e)a\n
v(= xwristo/n 1071a8). Aristotle has already said (1070a13-18) that,
in the case of physical beings, the ei)=doj
exists as a this-here and hence stands for itself, and in the case of produced
beings, it stands for itself in the know-how which, in turn, is in the
mind. Furthermore, as we have seen, it is the ei)=doj
which enables a this-here to stand for itself (Delta 8 1017b26) in defining
what this-here is through its eidetic limits. So it can be said that the
ei)=doj
is an ou)si/a a)ki/nhtoj kai\ xwristh/.

With Chapter 6 we come finally to the crucial question as to whether
there is an a)i+/dioj ou)si/a, with the candidate
for this being the ei)=doj, as carefully prepared
in the preceding chapters. Aristotle again picks up the thread from the
beginning of Chapter 1 where he has distinguished three kinds of ou)si/ai,
two of which are movable, and the third, the sights, is immovable, and
says that this last now has to be discussed to show "that there is necessarily
an a)i+/dion ou)si/an a)ki/nhton" (1071b4-5).
He starts by asserting that movement (ki/nhsin)
cannot become or perish because it "was always" (1071b8). Likewise for
time (xro/non 1071b8). Furthermore, the only
continuous movement is locomotion (ki/nhsij kata\ to/pon
1071b11), and of such motion, circular motion (ku/kl%
1071b12) in particular. Now, if there is something "moving or productive"
(ki/nhtiko\n h)\ poihtiko/n 1071b13), it must
be at work (e)nergou=n 1071b13), for if it were
merely potential there would be no movement. Therefore, he says, it would
be "useless" for us to postulate a)i+di/ouj ou)si/ai
such as the ei)/dh if they did not have a du/namij
as a principle/beginning of change within themselves (ei)
mh/ tij duname/nh e)ne/stai a)rxh\ metaba/llein 1071b15-16). "And
not even this is enough, nor positing another ou)si/a
beside the sights for, if it is not at work, there will be no movement"
(1071b17-18).

So what is needed are sights that are always at work, continually
bringing forth movement, namely, in this case, perpetual circular motion.
For this reason, it is also not possible that at first everything arose
from "night" and "all things were together" because "how could anything
be moved if there were no cause at work (e)nergei/#
ai)/tion)" (1071b28) and "matter does not move itself" (1071b29).
Such sights as such are, of course, "without matter" (1071b22), and this
must be so because matter is du/namij that admits
either the impression of a sight or the lack of sight (ste/rhsij)
and is therefore not always necessarily at work (e)nergei/#).
Aristotle criticizes Leukippos and Plato for simply positing something
that is always at work causing movement without saying why or what kind
of movement, but praises Anaxagoras in particular for specifying this something
as nou=j (1072a5). This mind is thought in analogy
to building know-how (tektonikh/ 1071b30) which,
through gathering in the lo/goj, fore-sees the
sight of what is to be produced, the difference being that, whereas the
builder's mind may be asleep or on other things, this first mind is always
at work, and its working is time itself because time is "either the same
as or an affection of movement" (1071b10).

Hence, to assert that both movement and time were "always" (a)i)ei/
1071b7), which is itself a temporal determination, amounts to saying
that they are (exist) only simultaneously, so it makes no sense
to ask what was 'before' there was something at work causing movement,
whether it be a uniform, "periodic circuit" (perio/d%
1072a9) or the movement of "becoming and decay" (ge/nesij
kai\ fqora\ 1072a11), although it is the former that is caused by
an unmoving ou)si/a. The train of thought in
Chapter 6 is to be deepened in the next chapter.

III. The ontological grounding of the god as the formal
and final cause of to\ kalo/n seen by nou=j
and the finiteness of human mind

Chapter 7 begins again with the perpetual circular motion of the heavens
from which a mover which is always at work can be inferred. Ultimately,
Aristotle argues, there must be a first mover which is itself unmoved,
because, within the productivist metaphysical paradigm, any movement demands
its cause which brings it forth. An unmoved first mover stops an infinite
regress. But what can this ou)si/a be which
is forever and always at work, and moves without itself being moved? To
answer this question, Aristotle proceeds immediately: "What is striven
for (o)rekto\n) and thinkable (nohto\n)
move thus. Of these, the first/primal ones are the same. For what is desired
is the apparently fair (kalo/n) and what is
willed first/primarily is the fair. We strive for it because it seems so
rather than it seems so because we strive/reach (o)rego/meqa)
for it; the starting-point namely is thinking (no/hsij)."
(1072a26). What is thinkable (the sight, the ontological element par excellence
seen by the mind's eye) and striven for (for-the-sake-of-which) first and
foremost are the same so, in the case of these 'first things' or primal
motivation, formal/eidetic cause and final cause coincide.

With this conceptual determination, Aristotle takes the step beyond
the unceasing movement inexplicably postulated by Leukippos and Plato by
showing thinking perpetually thinking the fair as the mover that is
always at work. "Mind, however, is moved by what is thinkable" (nou=j
de\ u(po\ tou= nohtou= kinei=tai 1072a31) and what thinking thinks
primarily is ou)si/a (1072a32), and more specifically
the "simple" or a(plh= ou)si/a (1072a33), i.e.
beingness itself in its simple standing presence, which is the sight (ei)=doj)
of the desirable fair (to\ kalo\n 1072a26).
But isn't Aristotle contradicting himself by asserting that "mind [...]
is moved by what is thinkable", if mind is supposed to be the unmoved mover
upon which the movement of all beings depends? Is there a way out of this
aporia? Here we are confronted with the pith of the problem of movement.
One could try to find a way out by making a distinction between physical
and intellectual movement, the former involving matter, the latter not,
but such a solution seems unsatisfying. Instead, the insight has to be
held onto that it is the sight thought that motivates movement, including
that of mind so that, strictly speaking, it is the sight of the desirable
fair that is the immovable mover, and this mover is perpetually at work
(e)nergou=n) precisely as the thinking
of mind it induces. This perpetual, energetic thinking of mind is nothing
other than the self-showing of the sight of the fair that keeps the world
open in the ontological sense. Mind is not a static substantive; rather
it is nothing other than pure energy, or at-work-ness, thinking the fair
sight of beingness.

The fair is not only the sight of the simple standing presence thought,
which, as eidetic or formal cause, moves without moving, but is also "the
for-the-sake-of-which" (to\ ou(= e(/neka 1072b2),
or final purpose reached for, and hence the motivation par excellence,
namely, that beings are, i.e. show themselves in the sights of their
ou)si/ai,
i.e. their ei)/dh, which define what
they are. Thinking thinks first and foremost beings as such, or beings
in their beingness (ou)si/a), and this sight
seen by the mind is fairest of all. This thinking that perpetually thinks
the fair sight of ou)si/a pure and simple "can
never admit having it another way" (1072b8) because it is motivated by
the immovable sight of beingness as such, which is the good and the fair.
The immovability of the ultimate sight that generates all movement suggests
i) that this generating is the generation of time itself and ii) that there
is a forever unchanging ontological order.

And active mind must exist, Aristotle claims (1072b10), because, without
a perpetual energetic thinking of beingness pure and simple, the fair would
not be held open as a motivating sight. One sense of necessity, namely,
is "that without which the good cannot be" (to\ de\
ou(= ou)k a)/neu to\ eu)= 1072b12). Furthermore, if the ultimate,
fair sight of beingness were merely a potential, the problem would recur
(cf. the final part of the previous section) as to how movement came about
in the very first place. Hence, there is also no matter (the site of all
potential) without the energy that has always already formed it ontologically
into a sight, and it is the sights of beings which, as final purposes,
motivate all beings' movements, i.e. all movement is always already ordered
by an ontological structure of the world that can be seen by mind. (One
could conjecture at this point that herein lies a secret, subterranean
passageway through history to the relationship between energy and matter
postulated by modern physics. Even the "chaos or night" (xa/oj
h)\ nu/c 1072a8) of the "theologians" (qeolo/goi
1071b27) in which, according to the "physicists" (fusikoi/
1071b27) "all things were one and the same" (h)=n o(mou=
ma/nta xrh/mata 1071b28), is perhaps not as far removed from the
modern physics of the big bang theory as modern physicists are wont to
think. Consider, for instance, that the modern physical concept of 'gas'
is derived etymologically from Greek 'chaos'. According to modern physics,
the celestial bodies (stars, planets, galaxies, etc.) were formed out of
gas under the effects of gravitational energy, i.e. these beings were differentiated
out of an undifferentiated 'chaos' in which "all things were one and the
same".)

This thinking of the sight of the fair that is perpetually at work is
also "sweet pleasure" (h(donh\ 1072b17) and
thinks, i.e. sees the eidetic sight of the "best" (a)ri/stou
1072b19). We humans can partake of such pleasurable thinking of the best
"for a short time" (1072b15), "and therefore waking, sensual perception,
thinking are most pleasurable" (1072b16) for us human beings (since, in
being awake, sensually perceiving and thinking, in ascending order, we
are exposed ever more intensely to the fair sight of beingness). But on
the perpetual thinking of mind depend "the heavens and nature" (o(
ou)rano\j kai\ h( fu/sij 1072b14), that is, all the sensuously perceptible
beings in the world, because all movement is motivated finally by the unmoved
sight of the fair held perpetually open by the energy of mind. And what
is mind? "Mind thinks itself in partaking of the thinkable, for the thinkable
becomes by taking hold of, that is, by thinking, so that mind (nou=j)
and the thinkable (nohto/n) are the same" (1072b21),
i.e. they belong together. Hence the famous formulation, "thinking is the
thinking of thinking" (h( no/hsij noh/sewj no/hsij1074b35).

Mind, therefore, as the same as the unmoved mover of the sight thought,
is itself nothing other than the perpetual energy of thinking that is always
thinking the best, the fair whose divine sight mind always sees, namely,
ou)si/a
pure and simple. "For, what is receptive for the thinkable, and that is,
for beingness, is mind, and mind is at work in having its thought" (to\
ga\r dektiko\n tou= nohtou= kai\ th=j ou)si/aj nou=j, e)nergei= de\ e)/xwn.
1072b22). What is thought "seems to be more divine than the mind, and theory
is the most sweetly pleasurable and best" (1072b24). We humans think this
sight only "sometimes" (pote/ 1072b25), whereas
"the god always" (o( qeo/j ai)ei/ 1072b25).
God is the mind that perpetually thinks, i.e. sees the sight of beingness
which, in turn, is the motivation for all beings to move according to what
they are and always were, i.e..their ou)si/a
and
to\ ti/ h)=n ei)=nai.

Aristotle's god has now appeared in his thinking through the lengthy
mediation of an elaborate line of thought starting in Lambda Chapter 1.
The sought-for ou)si/a has been found by making
the sight that already "remains" (u(pome/nei
Lambda 6 1070a25) in the productive mind of know-how (cf. previous section)
into a permanent, perpetual sight that is always being thought energetically
by divine mind. Prior to this mediation, a divine ou)si/a
that is forever, unmoving and able to stand for itself was still ungrounded,
merely announced and postulated, and the nature of this special ou)si/a
still unclarified. The completion of the line of thought is clearly signalled:
"That therefore there is an ou)si/a which is
forever, immovable and separated from sensuously perceptible beings is
clear from what has been said" (O(/ti me\n ou)=n e)/stin
ou)si/a tij a)i+/dioj kai\ a)ki/nhtoj kai\ kexwrisme/nh tw=n ai)sqhtw=n,
fanero\n e)k tw=n ei)rhme/nwn 1073a3-5) Only now, having reached
Lambda Chapter 7, are we able to see clearly how Aristotle thinks the god,
namely, as mind that is always at work thinking the best and most sweetly
pleasurable thought of the sight of the fair.

We human beings can participate in the divine insofar as we, too, are
able to think the motivating thought of the fair and see its sight through
the mind "sometimes". We are ourselves divine when we are up to thinking
the philosophical, ontological insight into the sights and, above all,
the sight of the fair. Our human minds have the potential (du/namij)
to be at work (e)nergei/#) seeing the fairest
sight of beingness itself, whereas god is nothing other than such a mind
ceaselessly at work. What distinguishes the god from human beings in this
Aristotelean determination is solely the difference between "always" (ai)ei/)
and "sometimes" (pote/), a temporal qualification.
The sought-for ou)si/a hangs on a difference
between forever and relative permanence, with the god being nothing other
than a perpetual, pure thinking, a quite remarkable kind of existence or
mode of being which is indeed so strange that it is entirely questionable
whether one can speak sensibly of this Aristotelean god 'existing' as a
kind of being. In terms of the metaphysical tradition, this god is an 'intelligible
being without matter'. The "always" of this pure thinking of the fair by
a god is not an "always" throughout time, but is time itself which,
Aristotle says (1071b10), is the same as the movement of all that is. Movement
and time are thus a tautology. The god is nothing other than the perpetual,
energetic thinking thinking the fairest idea that motivates the fair movement
of all beings in accordance with their being.

Only by virtue of the fair can there be any perpetual movement which,
paradigmatically for Aristotle, is the circular motion of the heavenly
bodies, whose movement is fair, because it is circular. For, as Aristotle
shows in the Physics Book VIII Chapters 8 and 9, locomotion is the
primary kind of movement, and circular motion, in particular, is the only
kind of locomotion that can be continuous and perpetual because, in contrast
to rectilinear motion which has a beginning, a middle and an end, any
point of circular motion can equally well be regarded as beginning, middle
and end, so that in motion it always has its end within itself,
i.e. is e)ntele/xei#, having-its-end or perfect,
and so does not have to come to an end in rest to have its end, i.e. to
be perfect. The fair is the sight for the sake of which all beings move;
its sight motivates their movements, that they correspond to their ou)si/a,
i.e. their beingness or essence as it shows itself in the sight
seen by mind.

For the celestial bodies, this motivation is presumably blind, for they
have no mind to see the sight of the fair. They move through blind necessity
(and such necessity can be formulated in laws of motion). Their circular
motion is perpetual for as long as time generates itself, with the unmoved
mover of mind that is always at work, thinking the sight of the fair which
is the cosmic order. The 'existence' of a god is thus nothing other than
a pure, energetic thinking which is an ongoing granting of the sight of
the fair which in turn is nothing other than the opening of world
as
world which human mind can see at times. Granted the perpetual locomotion
of the celestial bodies, the movements of all the other sensuously perceptible
beings, whose movements of locomotion, alteration, growth and decay, and
reproduction depend in part on the motion of celestial bodies, especially
the sun and the moon, also become embedded in the generation of time that
is the perpetual motion of the heavens. Such dependence must be thought
in the first place as teleological, and not as effective causality. The
world is then only open within the time-space energetically generated by
the sight of the godly fair, and human mind can sometimes gain insight
into its movements insofar as it moves according to the sight of the fair,
and not merely at haphazard.

If the world and time are absolute correlata, i.e. if they are 'simul'
or 'together with' one another, then it makes no sense to ask whether the
world is eternal or finite, for time cannot serve as a limit for the world
if they are absolutely correlated. As long as world is held open within
the generation of time, there is also the human possibility of thinking
the sight of the fair that motivates all to be what it is, including
that each being moves according to its whatness, its essence. Theory, which
enables the sights — and above all, the best and sweetest, fairest sight
of beingness pure and simple — to be seen, remains the humanly divine activity
and mind remains the divine human attribute par excellence. What mind can
see are the sights, i.e. the looks that beings as such show of themselves,
i.e. their beingness, and through thinking, we humans can catch a glimpse
of such sights as such. The apophantic as is the highest
prize, and speculation is our highest possibility, to raise the sights
we always already see implicitly and pre-ontologically, into an explicit,
ontological knowing. The sights are not human-made but are the way in which
beings shape up and present themselves qua beings to the mind's
thinking gaze.

Mind is not, in the first place, a human activity but, as the same as
the thought thinking thinks, is in the world as the shaping-up of the sights
beings as a whole present of themselves. These sights motivate beings to
be what they are, for if they do not live up to their sights as seen by
mind, they are deficient beings whose existence is merely empirical, accidental,
unworthy, even ugly. For the mind there can be only this motivation of
a movement toward the best sight of the fair, no matter how much finite
human beings themselves, engaging in theory, may quarrel and struggle over
how this sight of the fair is to be defined in human language and thought.

IV. The fatal first step in the Metaphysics that
skips over an alternative path for thinking: The sight of whoness

But this sight of the fair which mind can see is, according to Aristotle,
a kind of ou)si/a understood as a kind of whatness
or quidditas. Let us go back to the very beginning. The metaphysical investigation
of to\ o)\n v(= o)/n, namely, is announced as
the investigation of beings insofar as they are beings, or beings in their
beingness. This first formulation of the subject of Metaphysics
is still completely open, presenting us only with the puzzle of how to
grasp the import of the v(= or 'qua' or 'as'
or 'insofar as' at the heart of this formulation. The Metaphysics
will be a search for the first, governing beginnings (a)rxai/)
or causes (ai)/tia) for beings insofar as they
are beings, where such beginnings and causes are not understood in any
temporal or ontic sense, but solely and strictly in the ontological sense
of the wherefrom to which beings are indebted for their being. If ou)si/a
is named as this first cause, it is so at first in the still open, etymological
sense of 'beingness', since the word itself is built as the substantiation
of the feminine present participle, ou)=sa,
of the verb ei)=nai. The mere detail that ou)si/a
is a grammatical substantive should already give us pause, because grammatical
categories are not innocent, but themselves laden with metaphysical decisions.
The open sense of ou)si/a as 'beingness' is
immediately identified in its primary signification as what a being
is: "It is obvious that of these [significations of being ME] the first
[sense of ME] being is the what-it-is which signifies beingness" (fanero\n
o(/ti tou/twn prw=ton o)\n to\ ti/ estin, o(/per shmai/nei th\n ou)si/an
Zeta 1 1028a14). This "obvious" should give us another pause for thought.

Ou)si/a is explicated as the whatness or
quidditas of beings which is further explicated as to\
ti/ h)=n ei)=nai or 'what-it-was-ness' and finally as ei)=doj
or the sight or look which a being offers of itself as a being in its whatness.
Traditionally, to\ ti/ h)=n ei)=nai has been
translated as 'essence', just as ou)si/a has,
whereas ou)si/a has been rendered in Latin as
both 'essentia' and 'substantia'. It is no accident that in grammar, the
noun-names of somewhats is a termed a 'substantive' nor that the grammatical
subject of a sentence as 'that about which is something is predicated'
is one of the significations of ou)si/a, namely,
u(pokei/menon.
That which is in the pre-eminent sense is the substance which is
that which always was what it was, i.e. that which has an enduring essence
which is gathered into the defining limits of a sight or look revealed
to the mind's thoughtful eye as its
ei)=doj.
The look of a being as 'what it always was' is immovable, and it is only
in the synthesis with matter (u(/lh) that a
singular, physical being exists.

The singular being as defined by the limits of its look, by virtue of
which it has a standing presence, is situated in its predicament which
can be addressed through the categories or predicaments such as quality,
quantity, relation, place, time, etc. What a being is is defined
further by predicating its predicaments, but its prime definition is given
by its substance, i.e. by what it is, independently of the predicament
which befalls it accidentally in its accidents. The substance is what endures
through time and takes a stand in the definite limits of its look. A being
as such is therefore a standing presence. For this metaphysical thinking,
the singular human being, Socrates, is such because Socrates materially
embodies the look of a human being, such look being the substance and essence
of a human being, i.e. what Socrates always already was as an idea, namely,
a living being that has the lo/goj which, in
turn, gathers, and can therefore see, the defining looks of beings. What
the human being always already was as a being is the sight-seeing somewhat.
In turn, a singular human being such as Socrates presents the sight of
a being with understanding, for understanding is nothing other than the
power to gather beings into the defining limits of their sights so that
they show themselves as beings. In traditional terms, what makes
a human into a human being is its rationality which is the power to understand
all beings in their essences that show themselves to the mind's eye in
their respective ideas. Metaphysics is nothing other than the explicit
unfolding for thought of what the human mind already sees implicitly.

Such is the fateful course taken by metaphysics from the very beginning.
Beings as a whole, and human beings in particular, have been conceived
first and foremost in their whatness, their substance. A corollary to this,
as we have seen in detail, is that the god, too, can only be thought metaphysically
as a kind of whatness. The summum ens of theology cannot be anything other
than a prime mover and causa sui.

What, then, is the alternative? Such an alternative can only be a different
path in thinking that leads in a different direction on which something
else comes into view, thus giving an alternative sense to beings as such,
including especially, the sense of human being itself. The originary openness
of ou)si/a understood as beingness has to be
captured prior to its substantiation into ti/ e)stin,
quiddity, whatness and on to what-it-wasness. This is not to say that it
is false to take the path into whatness (indeed, this path is inevitable,
given the overpowering persuasiveness of the phenomenon of whatness), but
rather that taking this path exclusively covers up an alternative possible
path for thinking that, although less conscpicuous, opens onto an alternative
vista of phenomena which are by no means unfamiliar to us but which have
been unable to come to their ontological concepts under the predominance
of the metaphysics of whatness. Metaphysics as we know it has always been
quidditative metaphysics, but the consequences of this restriction, although
inevitably felt in one way or another, have to date hardly been thought
through.

The alternative path and the alternative vista that calls for thinking
is that of ti/j e)stin, quis est, quissity,
whoness. First of all, the alternative path of whoness as an alternative
can be characterized negatively, namely, it does not lead to a substantial
essence of what-it-was-ness perduring as a standing presence. Nevertheless,
who a being is does show itself in a look, an ei)=doj,
for otherwise it would not be a phenomenon and would have no truth, no
unconcealedness. But this look of whoness is not an enduring one, nor does
it reside merely in the being itself (kaq" au(to/),
but is itself a reflection that comes about in an interplay with
the world. Whoness is a shining-forth into and shining-back from the world
in a value interplay. As such, it is not substantive, standing on
its own, but interrelational and situational (sumbebhko/j).
Nor is the look of whoness a universal look, but rather a singular, idiosyncratic
one shown to and reflected in the world. Who a being is is always the look
of this-here in this singular moment, in this singular, inimitable situation,
in an interplay of reflection in which a singular who inimitably and idiosyncratically
shows itself and is estimated. The look of whoness is in the middle, in
between. On the one hand, it is the look a being shows off of itself and,
on the other, it is the look taken by those looking who, in turn, reflect
this look in how they evaluate the being to be.

A being does not merely show itself, but shows itself off, as
who because its self-showing is from the outset oriented toward the reflection
of its showing in the world. The looks presented by beings, however, can
only be seen by beings who are open to seeing such looks. Such beings are
human beings, gifted (and cursed) with exposure to looking at and evaluating
the looks of beings as such. The reflection of showing-off in the world
is therefore a reflection in the eyes of others who reflect an individual's
showing-off by, in turn, comporting themselves toward it in a certain way.
Such modes of valuing comportment can be either positive (affirmation,
acknowledgement, appreciation, estimation, esteem, etc.), negative (rejection,
depreciation, devaluation, denigration, contempt, etc.) or indifferent
(ignoring, disinterest, formal politeness, etc.).

From this it follows that the value interplay in which beings show themselves
off and are mutually evaluated as who they are can only truly come
into play among beings who look and can see the reflections of their looks
in other beings who can see whoness, i.e. whoness is the value interplay
among human beings, mutually evaluating who each other is in a shining
back and forth in varying situations that come about. Other beings not
gifted and cursed with ontological sight, i.e. with the ability to see
the sights of beings as such, only enter into the value interplay
indirectly in being valued by human beings and hence deriving value in
a value interplay among themselves. Thus, for instance, five pairs of shoes
may be reflected as (exchange) values in one bed, and this is derivative
of shoes being valued as good by human beings for wearing on the feet,
and beds being valued for sleeping in. Shoes in themselves are unable to
understand that they are valued by human beings as being useful, whereas
a cobbler, who is able to mend shoes, is also able to understand the look
mirrored back by his customers, who value his ability to mend shoes by
comporting themselves toward the cobbler in a certain affirmative way,
thus reflecting his whoness as being-a-cobbler.

Although the ability to mend shoes resides in the cobbler himself and
hence can also be regarded as a quality inhering in the cobbler
in the dimension of whatness, who he is as a cobbler comes
about only in the mirroring interplay of others valuing his ability to
mend shoes. Similarly, a scholar may have excellent abilities as a scholar,
e.g. be diligent in his research, and profound and original in his analyses,
but if these abilities are not appreciated by his peers, who reflect them
in their comportment toward him or her by, say, citing their colleague,
the who-status of the scholar concerned is as nought, i.e. s/he is a nobody
with certain unacknowledged abilities. It is always possible to deflect
the phenomenological gaze and superimpose the predominating categories
of whatness on the dimension of whoness, which is thereby made to disappear.
A lack (ste/rhsij) of appreciative reflection
of who the cobbler is as a cobbler as shown in a particular way
of comporting oneself toward him, however, is not to be thought as a reduction
of who to what, but is a phenomenon (of negativity) in its own right, viz.
the
refusal of the world of others to shine back a who-status as
a possible (transient or lasting) outcome of the ongoing value interplay.
Such a refusal may be grounded, with good reason, in the
individual concerned genuinely lacking the ability which would earn him
merit, or it may be the unlucky outcome of how someone's showing-off of
his or her genuine abilities is reflected by the others who themselves
are lacking the ability to see and appreciate this singular individual's
excellences. The much-discussed "society of the spectacle" (Debord) lives
from the mirror interplay of appreciating that which and those who can
be easily appreciated because the criteria for such appreciation are lowest
common denominator ones.

But why is whoness a category in its own right, a category sui generis,
rather than a certain configuration of the traditional categories of whatness
(quidditas), howness (quality), howmuchness (quantity), relation (pro/j
ti), etc. characterizing a being in the predicament of its situation?
One could say, for instance, that the cobbler's ability as cobbler is a
certain quality, and his relation to his customers is just that, namely,
a kind of relation, and his estimation by his customers is the quantitative
monetary value of his income from mending shoes. There is, indeed, nothing
to prevent the categories of whatness being superimposed on the phenomenon
of whoness in such a way that the latter phenomenon is made to disappear,
and precisely this disappearance is the 'achievement' of traditional metaphysics
whose orientation is toward beings in the third person, i.e. as objects
that can be described from a safe distance. The dimension of whoness proper,
however, is that of the value interplay between and among human beings
in what must be called the dimension of you-and-me or the dimension
of first-and-second person. This dimension is fleeting, coming about
only in the momentary situation, and it is always amenable to a third-person,
'objective' description from outside the mirror interplay itself between
you-and-me. In such a mirror interplay, you and I comport ourselves toward
each other in a reciprocity of evaluation that shows how we value or devalue,
appreciate or depreciate, estimate or despise, esteem or spurn each other.
This reciprocal relation of estimation and evaluation is not simply the
addition of two one-sided relations in the traditional sense of pro/j
ti, but a complex, interwoven interplay that is usually very subtle
and therefore easily can be overlooked and made to disappear in any 'objective'
description.

The abilities or powers an individual possesses can, indeed, be described
as certain qualities, but the sociating interplay of whoness is one of
reciprocal estimation and appreciation of those abilities or powers by
virtue of which an individual, in showing off its abilities and powers,
assumes its social standing as somewho or other. The originary powers an
individual enjoys in social, sociating interplay with the others are its
genuine abilities and excellences that merit acknowledgement by others,
but there are also derived powers such as wealth and public office which
also lend an individual its who-status. The acquisition of wealth or public
office in the first place is attributable to (entrepreneurial or political)
ability (one's own or one's lineage). Moreover, wealth and public office
have a more substantial appearance than individual abilites since
they are possessed or occupied by an individual (and, under certain circumstances,
can even be handed down). Nevertheless, both wealth (what money can buy)
and public office (a recognized, legitimate political status) themselves
depend on their reflection by the others who value what money can buy and
honour a holder of public office, and are social powers only within
the mirror interplay of sociation in which they are evaluated as
social powers. Money, for instance, is a social power only within a society
in which the social practice of exchange, in which goods of all kinds are
evaluated and exchanged, is customarily practised, and a public office
is only a social power by virtue of a certain recognized position within
the constitution of a polity.

Paper presented to the conference Heidegger und Religion
in Meßkirch 04-07 June 2008 organized by Holger Zaborowski and Alfred
Denker. Parts enclosed in curled brackets {} were omitted when delivering
the paper in Meßkirch. Back to 1

"The transcendence which from the start has skipped over
beings and nothing else enables in the first place what has already been
skipped over to ontically stand-over-against as a being, and as
something standing-over-against, what has been skipped over is now graspable
in itself. [...] Whither the subject transcends is what we call world."
(Die Transzendenz, die im vorhinein Seiendes, und nichts anderes, übersprungen
hat, ermöglicht allererst, daß dieses zuvor Übersprungene
als
Seiendes ontisch gegenübersteht and als Gegenüberstehendes
nun an ihm selbst erfaßbar ist. [...] Wohin das Subjekt transzendiert,
ist das, was wir Welt nennen. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe
der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz Sommersemester 1928 ed. Klaus Held
GA26:212) Back to 5

"This is not just a strange notion of philosophy, but
a jolt to the spirited human mind, the world, the Weltgeist. The revelation
of God has not happened to him as if by a stranger. What we contemplate
here so drily and abstractly is concrete. People say that such stuff, the
abstractions we contemplate when we let the philosophers quarrel and argue
with one another in our cabinet and come to some agreement or other, are
word-abstractions. — No! No! They are deeds of the Weltgeist, gentlemen,
and therefore of destiny. The philosophers are closer to the Lord than
those who nourish themselves from the crumbs of spirited mind; they read
or write these cabinet orders straight in the original: they are obliged
to copy them down. The philosophers are the mu/stai
who went along and were present in the innermost sanctuary at the jolt;
the others have their particular interests: this reign, these riches, this
girl. — That for which the Weltgeist needs a hundred or a thousand years
we do more quickly because we have the advantage that it is a past and
takes place in abstraction." (Dies ist nicht so ein Einfall der Philosophie,
sondern ein Ruck des Menschengeistes, der Welt, des Weltgeistes. Die Offenbarung
Gottes ist nicht als ihm von einem Fremden geschehen. Was wir so trocken,
abstrakt hier betrachten, ist / konkret. Solches Zeug, sagt man, die Abstraktionen,
die wir betrachten, wenn wir so in unserem Kabinett die Philosophen sich
zanken und streiten lassen und es so oder so ausmachen, sind Wort-Abstraktionen.
— Nein! Nein! Es sind Taten des Weltgeistes, meine Herren, und darum des
Schicksals. Die Philosophen sind dabei dem Herrn näher, als die sich
nähren von den Brosamen des Geistes; sie lesen oder schreiben diese
Kabinettsordres gleich im Original: sie sind gehalten, diese mitzuschreiben.
Die Philosophen sind die mu/stai, die beim Ruck
im innersten Heiligtum mit- und dabeigewesen; die anderen haben ihr besonderes
Interesse: diese Herrschaft, diesen Reichtum, dies Mädchen. — Wozu
der Weltgeist 100 und 1000 Jahre braucht, das machen wir schneller, weil
wir den Vorteil haben, daß es eine Vergangenheit [ist] und in der
Abstraktion geschieht. VGPII W19:488f). Back to 16

"The relationship of the Greeks to the gods is moreover
a knowing and not a 'faith' in the sense of a deliberate holding-to-be-true
on the basis of an authoritative annunciation. We do not yet fathom in
which incipient way the Greeks were the knowing ones. Because they were,
they found the beginning of authentic thinking. They were not knowing just
because they had a philosophy." (Der Bezug der Griechen zu den Göttern
ist überdies ein Wissen und nicht ein 'Glauben' im Sinne eines
willentlichen Fürwährhaltens aufgrund autoritativer Verkündigung.
Wir ermessen es noch nicht, in welch anfänglicher Weise die Griechen
die Wissenden gewesen. Weil sie es gewesen, deshalb fanden sie den Anfang
des eigentlichen Denkens. Nicht etwa waren sie Wissende, weil sie eine
Philosophie besaßen. Heidegger, GA55:15 Heraklit) Back
to 22

"Here is recorded by way of hints what has been reserved
in long hesitation as a straight-edge for a [further] formulation. " (Hier
wird das in langer Zögerung Verhaltene andeutend festgehalten als
Richtscheit einer Ausgestaltung. Motto Beiträge zur Philosophie
(Vom Ereignis) GA65:XVVII). Back to 30

Such an interpretation seems justified by passages like
the following; suneplh//rwse to\ o(/lon o( qeo/j, e)ndelexh=
poih/saj th\n ge/nesin ("the god fulfilled the whole in the (only)
way remaining by making genesis continuous/perpetual." De Gen. II
336b32). If the god "makes" genesis perpetual, this seems to be a clear
indicationof the god as an effective cause, a maker, but a motivator can
also been a 'maker' of movement, as should become apparent in the sequel.
Back
to 37

After writing this in February 2008, I discovered an independent
confirmation of the thrust of my line of thought, which follows the question
concerning an independent, unmoving, perpetual ou)si/a,
in Th. Kobusch's article on Aristotle under the entry for "Metaphysics"
in the Ritter/Gründer Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie,
where we read e.g., "Diese selbständige und unbewegte Wesenheit, die
Aristoteles als eigentlichen Gegenstand der M. versteht, kann nicht schon
der transmundane unbewegte Beweger sein, denn Aristoteles spricht in den
ersten elf Büchern der M. allgemein vom Seienden als solchen und deutet
nur gelegentlich, dann aber unmißverständlich, die Einbeziehung
dieses ausgezeichneten Gegenstandes in den Bereich dieser Wissenschaft
an. Daher muß mit der unbewegten Wesenheit oder 'unbewegten Natur'
das Wesen der Dinge selbst gemeint sein." (Vol 5 Col. 1192); English: "This
independent and unmoving essentiality [ou)si/a
ME] which Aristotle understands as the object proper of M. cannot already
be the transmundane, unmoving mover because in the first eleven books of
the M. Aristotle speaks generally of beings as such and only occasionally,
but then unmistakably, indicates incorporating this distinguished object
into the scope of this science. Therefore, by unmoving essentiality or
'unmoving nature', the essence of things themselves must be intended."
The question concerning the existence, non-existence or mode of existence
of a "transmundane, unmoving mover" however, still remains for me a point
of contention with Kobusch on possible readings of Aristotle's text. Back
to 38

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